Riddle me this: what makes a marketable car? What many of us often hear in commercials are varying aspects of the following:
Speed.
Durability.
Consistency.
Awards.
Improvement upon past models.
You’ve read the title of this piece, so you know who I’m going to be writing about. Hopefully you’ve heard of Justin Verlander, or even better, know of his pedigree.
I’m going to go over the aforementioned car commercial tropes and apply them to our friend JV, so roll down your windows and enjoy the ride!
Speed
Though velocity is certainly not everything that a pitcher needs to succeed at the major league level, it is undeniably an important aspect of getting hitters out.
Justin Verlander has been pitching in the major leagues full-time since 2006. Over that period, the righty has averaged approximately 94.4 miles per hour on his fastball compared to the Major League average of ~91.2 miles per hour among his fellow starting pitchers. Clearly, Verlander is special when it comes to throwing a baseball as fast as humanly possible.
To prove that point, Verlander ranks fourth (minimum 1000 innings) in fastball velocity behind Chris Archer, Stephen Strasburg (of whom Prentiss wrote about here), and current teammate Gerrit Cole in four-seam velocity.
Durability and Consistency
Pitchers break a lot, of course. After all, it’s not very difficult to hurt your arm or another part of your body when trying to generate the velocities needed to have a chance at a professional career.
Justin Verlander has been remarkably unbreakable over the course of his storied career. He’s only made one trip to the Disabled/Injured List over his entire career; it was for a bit over a week.
Seriously, think about that! Over 14 full seasons, Verlander has missed only a few starts as a result of not being on the roster. Now, that’s deceiving because the fireballer missed 12 starts in 2015 due to an oblique injury and corresponding surgery.
Even with 2015 being taken into account, Verlander has missed just 42 starts over his 14-year career if we generously assume a baseline of 34 starts a year. Therefore, the hurler has missed just 3 starts per season. That’s incredible considering how hard he throws and how much he’s thrown over the years.
Now, being an innings-eater for a team is useful but not extraordinary. If a pitcher made 34 starts per year but has an ERA in the 5s every season, he would only be useful on a rebuilding team. That, of course, is not Justin Verlander.
Among qualified American League starting pitchers, Verlander has ranked 11th or better in terms of ERA every season besides 2008 and his 2013-2015 stretch of being “only” above league average. That’s 10 seasons of dominance and 4 seasons of serviceability, which is anything but inconsistency in my mind.
Even better: Verlander has averaged nearly 5 WAR per season over his career, and that does not even account for the fact that 2019 isn’t even halfway over yet. This guy is just amazing.
Awards
Though I tend to ignore awards and look at the raw data available to determine the legacy of a player, I think it’s important to talk about the accolades that Justin Verlander has collected over his career. The fact that this section perfectly fits my car commercial theme doesn’t hurt either.
Shall we begin with the tour around Verlander’s trophy case?
2006: Rookie of the Year
2007: All-Star, top 5 in Cy Young voting, top 20 in MVP voting
2009: All-Star, top 5 in Cy Young voting, top 20 in MVP voting
2010: All-Star
2011: All-Star, Cy Young, Most Valuable Player
2012: All-Star, top 5 in Cy Young voting, top 20 in MVP voting
2013: All-Star
2016: Top 5 in Cy Young voting, top 20 in MVP voting
2017: World Series Ring, top 5 in Cy Young voting, ALCS MVP
2018: All-Star, top 5 in Cy Young voting, top 20 in MVP voting
(Thanks to Baseball Reference (https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/v/verlaju01.shtml) for making that easy, by the way.)
So...not too shabby!
Improvement
If a perspective car customer wasn’t convinced by the unrealistic scenery and impressive specs on a certain car, companies typically promise that the new model of the certain car is markedly better than previous models.
Though he has never truly recaptured his 2011 brilliance, Verlander has steadily improved since his 2013-2015 mediocrity in an impressive fashion. Firstly, let’s look at his ERA- and whiff percentage over the past five seasons as to get a sense of quality.
There’s a clear increase in whiff percentage and correlating decrease in ERA since 2014 - exactly what we want.
How has Verlander improved so much, despite his age? Several articles have been written on the subject recently (here, here, and many more), so I’ll primarily just be restating prior conclusions.
The Astros are famous for enhancing high spin rate fastball-curveball combinations, from Collin McHugh to Ryan Pressly. A similar change, though less drastic, appears to have occurred with Verlander’s fastball and curveball, but interestingly the effect is even stronger when it concerns Verlander’s slider (his primary secondary pitch). What JV has also improved since his rough patch is the command of his pitches:
As shown in the zone profiles above, Verlander is throwing more pitches down and away (to righties; down and in to lefties), where he gets the most swings and misses, and fewer pitches inside (to righties; outside to lefties) where he gets a relatively low amount of whiffs:
The combination of higher spin rates (and the accompanying increase in pitch movement) and throwing pitches where batters are likeliest to swing and miss causes those poor hitters to chase more. What makes those chases even better? Verlander is inducing less contact on pitches outside of the zone:
What the aforementioned shows is that Justin Verlander has proven that he can improve even while common sense about aging athletes introduces the contrary into our minds.
The Commercial
Justin Verlander can brave any terrain and can go thousands of innings without needing an oil (ligament) change. He’s won awards from experts and is even better than before...somehow. His fastball might be the most aesthetically pleasing and most effective in the world, so come to a ballpark near you every fifth day and lease the kinda-new and vastly improved 2019 Justin Verlander for only thirty-three million dollars a year.
It’s a limited time offer, but that offer sure has lasted a long time.
May your pennants fly forever.
-Ryan
No comments:
Post a Comment